China Is More Unequal

In response to:

In his review of The Right Path by Joe Scarborough [NYR, January 9], Garry Wills writes that “America has the greatest disparity of income between the top few and the rest of society…among all nations.” I side with Wills completely in deploring the growing inequality in the US, but there are countries where the problem is even worse.

Every measure I have seen from any group lists China, with the world’s second-largest economy, as having greater inequality than the US. To that we must add two more problems: the government’s hypocrisy in calling its system “socialist” and its repression of the truth about the inequality. Chinese people who call for transparency about wealth inequality (Xu Zhiyong, most recently) are sent to prison. This letter, if posted on a website in China, would disappear within hours.